Originally Posted by nekokami
I'm not kidding about spoilers. If you haven't read this book and don't want to read details about it, stop now!
I just finished Brisingr (it was a Christmas gift). I liked it, though I thought it was a bit slow in places, particularly in the first half. But then, I liked the first two books, and thought that Eragon improved after I read Eldest, which I thought deconstructed the common tropes used in Eragon in a fairly clever way.
I was a bit disappointed that the Ra'zac were exterminated, though, after the big deal about the extinction of the dragons being such a moral tragedy in Eldest. I had sort of hoped that they would turn out to have some kind of natural ecological function, like scavenger beetles, that had just been subverted by Galbatorix. I'd even thought that perhaps they were intended to collect the souls of the dead, proving the elves wrong about the existance of the soul after death, and that those souls they collected were being used by Galbatorix to generate power. (I guess I was sort of close on that one, though it turns out to be a rather different situation.) Their defeat was a bit of a non-event, as well, though there might be some interesting repercussions once their weird cult of devotees discovers it.
I felt like Eragon's adolescent yearning after Arya was better in this one, as well. That was kind of embarrassing in Eldest.
I'm afraid Brom being Eragon's father wasn't much of a surprise at all, but Selena's rather dark past was. Did anyone else see that coming? I'd begun to wonder if Roran will turn out to be hers as well-- in fact, I was wondering if Gower was really her brother, or a former lover, because I suspect Roran is going to turn out to be Eragon's half-brother as well. But people say he looks like Gower, so I suppose that's not likely.
Another loose thread I'm waiting to see about is whether Gower really betrayed Eragon and Saphira to the Empire, as I suspect. (I think the merchant Gower took them to see in the first book was an agent, and Gower knew that, then decided not to betray Eragon after all, and sent him away on the day he expected the king's agents to show up.)
I suppose the "Vault of Souls" will have something to do with a stash of dragon hearts (shades of Escaflowne there), though I'd be interested to see the elves proved wrong about the survival of the soul (of non-dragons) after death. The elves seem a bit too sure of themselves in Eldest-- about a lot of things. And the appearance of one of the Dwarven gods in Brisingr raised some interesting possibilities about just how fallible the Elves' knowledge might be.
Anyone else have any thoughts or speculations on the series thus far? (I'm looking for constructive discussion, not just series bashing or fanboy cheering, which is why I'm posting here rather than in some other internet group dedicated to the series.)
|